I am actually intending to respond to you, but I’ve been out the country on a mini-vacation and just got back, only to be hit with a pretty rough stomach flu.

Anyway, quick question….how am I being compared to Scoble and Rose and pissing matching between navel gazers?

Just to be clear, IN NO WAY am I abusing or even using my platform/size of audience for personal gain by berating Delta. I’m acting as one of their most valuable customers (paying business class) and loyal customers (Platinum medallion) who really was treated like shit…AND oh by the way, I have a blog.

Your logic is almost a little backwards if you’re saying that BECAUSE I have a large blog, I should refrain from doing, what - quite frankly - every consumer I write/speak about is doing.

Help me understand your logic.

And for the record, I am no Scoble and never will be. On many, many, many levels.

This article brings up some great points, and I definitely have to agree that right now it seems like twitter and friend feed are the hottest chick on the cheer leading team. But I’d like to add my two cents if I may.

Perhaps some of what we are seeing the birth of an entirely new concept of our online life. We all have email, the ability to get online at the drop of a hat, but what is increasingly becoming popular is building that online identity in small niche markets. We are all doing it in one way or another, but we are using a collage of tools that hasn’t become standardized yet. now I’m not saying that I necessarily want them to centralize either, because with centralization comes the death of a niche market, or so I fear. When you look at people like Kevin Rose, Leo Laporte, or Jonathan Coulton, you find people who have become extremely well known in a small niche market. And without tools like twitter, friend feed, facebook and the like, these personalities simply wouldn’t exist.

As an IT Director of a large church in KC, I too have a niche market of people I share with on twitter and other tools. There is a growing collection of IT Directors in the United States who are beginning to know of each other through these tools, and sharing the wisdom of the technology that we are all using.

So in a nutshell I think some level of self promotion via the web regarding your professional career is good, and in fact healthy for anyone else in your field, but when we begin to spill into other areas, or seeing something from it of self interest, we have a real problem brewing.

@Joseph Jaffe: First off, thanks for stopping by. It’s great to see you that you’re monitoring your online brand (of course). Honestly, I didn’t expect the visit. Secondly, sorry to hear about your recent illness. Definitely sounds like a rough go.

To clarify my logic, the comparison I’m drawing between yourself, Kevin Rose and Robert Scoble is what I perceive as an unfortunate misuse of influence as it applies to your sizable personal communities of followers and the subsequent degrees of damage that has on your personal brands.

- Kevin Rose was fishing in his community to follow him from Twitter to FriendFeed in an attempt at “customer conversion.” No value proposition except for asserting his identity. Not necessarily offensive, just a non-creative way of doing it.

- Robert Scoble was bashing on Rose for this and at the same time trying to elevate his brand by denigrating Rose’s and making him an example in front of his own community. This was, of course, cloaked under the guise of being some sort of strange enforcement of social media best practices. That made Scoble look rather petty, in my opinion. Again, poor brand management.

- And in following the “Delta Skelter” saga on your blog, I believe you’re leveraging your personal community to take Delta to task in ways that very few “typical” consumers could ever accomplish, even those with blogs or other digital means to air their complaint. While you certainly have a right to be disgruntled and seek compensation, you’re also playing games by soliciting your community’s feedback on whether or not to “soldier on,” create a YouTube video, etc., in what is turning into a quest for retribution.

Your professional affiliations still seem to be a conflict of interest in my mind in this case even though you have prominently disclaimed your client relationship with American Airlines with every post you’ve made on the matter. However this still seems to be an awkward tightrope to be walking. I believe folks like Bob Garfield can get away with sort of stuff (Comcast Must Die) since they are taking a stance as a journalist/editorialist.

Now that Delta has reached out and offered what they believe is fair compensation (their opinion), you’ve rejected their offer (your right). So the staring contest continues and I believe your personal brand will begin to suffer in the process as you now seek preferential treatment that appears to be beyond the ability for Delta’s customer service folks to offer. (Interestingly enough, this is another point where you and a typical consumer start to part ways as a typical consumer doesn’t have much of a personal brand that can be damaged in these types of instances.)

Let me know if you still don’t feel like I’m articulating my logic clearly. I’m keeping an open mind here, so please help me understand your point of view.

No need to dance on this point any further. I respect your point of view.

Here’s a question for you, though: do you get the feeling that Delta is treating you differently because of who you are and your given area of expertise? Or are they simply playing the role of the typical big bureaucratic brand that treats everyone with an equal level of disdain?

You want to see bad? Look at David Armano’s tweets. Jesus talk about a guy who really loves himself.